The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board blamed President Donald Trump for the nationwide “gerrymander race to the bottom” after Virginia voters delivered a sharp rebuke to Republican redistricting in other parts of the country.
Voters narrowly approved a statewide referendum on Tuesday that temporarily allows the Virginia General Assembly to draw new congressional districts that could help Democrats pick up as many as four House seats in November’s midterms.
The move came after Trump sparked a national gerrymandering arms race last summer when he asked Texas for a “simple redrawing” of its political maps to help Republicans gain five seats.
The Virginia outcome is “bad news for GOP control of the House in November, but Republicans can also blame President Trump for starting this rolling rock that has now come down on their heads,” the editorial board of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Journal wrote.
The new maps could allow Democrats to take 10 of Virginia 11 House seats; currently they hold six.
A judge on Wednesday blocked certification of the referendum, saying it was unconstitutional, ABC7 reported. The state’s attorney general has vowed to appeal. The Virginia Supreme Court also overruled two previous orders from the lower court to block the referendum vote, and is still expected to hear those cases.
The referendum, which passed by 51.5 percent to 48.6 percent, mirrors a successful effort led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year in response to the Texas gerrymander.
In both states, voters gave lawmakers the power to draw new districts until after the 2030 census, at which point the states will return to the standard process of using maps drawn by an independent, bipartisan commission.
States like Texas, which don’t have bipartisan districting commissions, had a more straightforward path to redrawing their maps at Trump’s request, though many of those efforts are now being challenged in court.
Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina have also redrawn their maps to help Republicans gain up to four seats, and Florida’s Gov. Greg DeSantis is pushing voters to approve new maps.
Proponents of the Virginia referendum, including former President Barack Obama, had framed the race as a way to push back against Republicans trying to give themselves as unfair advantage in the midterms as voters sour on the Trump administration’s policies.
“Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet,” Obama wrote on X.com. “Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.”
Trump, meanwhile had urged Virginia voters in a frenzied Truth Social post to “VOTE ‘NO’ TO SAVE YOUR COUNTRY!”
After the “yes” vote prevailed, the president ranted on Truth Social about the election being “RIGGED” through mail-in voting, without providing any evidence. He also chalked up his humiliating loss to the referendum being “purposefully unintelligence and deceptive.”
“As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the Referendum,” he wrote.
Voters were asked to answer the question: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board argued that the close outcome in Virginia is evidence that under normal circumstances, voters don’t want politicians choosing their own voters.
The state’s bipartisan commission was established in 2020 with 66 percent of the vote.
“The Constitution calls for reapportionment of House seats once a decade after the census. Congress could go further and ban mid-decade redistricting, starting, say, after the 2030 census,” the editorial board wrote. “Otherwise we will have a House that can barely be called democratic.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
